New Year's Running Resolutions: Create your own unique running goal.

Not all running goals have to be about times, distances, or "accomplishments" in the conventional sense at all. They don't even have to be completed within a year, or have any time constraints whatsoever. The only limit on your running resolutions is your own imagination. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Your goal could be geographic: A couple well-known goals are running a marathon in every state or on every continent. My friend Daniel has a continuing project of running at least a mile in every state. I'm still working on running a race in every county in Oregon.

Here's one I just came up with this week (not that I'm doing it myself, but feel free to steal the idea). Run a race of each popular distance in ascending or descending order: mile, 5k, 8k, 10k, 12k, 15k... and take it up as far as you think you can go. Heck, you can even throw in some races with unique distances like the Crater Lake Rim Runs 6.7 miler.

And here's one I did do (and it was surprisingly fun): In 1999, I decided to take advantage of my appallingly large collection of cotton race shirts (this was in the pre "technical" fabric era, and the pre Joe-wearing-singlets era) and wear a different shirt in every race for the whole year. My only rules were no duplication, never wear the shirt from the current event, and try not to wear a shirt from an event longer than the race I was running (though I did let that last one slide a few times). I only reached the pedestrian total of 55 races that year, and I was easily able to wear 55 different shirts, with dozens (hundreds?!) of shirts left over.

Speaking of pedestrian totals, I will not be breaking my record of 84 races in one year in 2008, and I won't be attempting it in 2009. While I'll still be racing frequently, and hopefully fast, in the coming year, my own running resolution is to have fun. What's yours?

Let us know what your running resolution is, and if you've come up with any creative goals of your own. And Happy New Year!